A thin, laptop friendly, RJ45 replacement. Wifi sucks...
or, better wifi...
comms researcher here
dont count on it for the next 10 years
Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
231–240 of 535 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is not really paid for the OS, but for the hardware. Selling an OS seems nearly impossible today.
"We can't do it because it's a different business model than Apple's" ;) ? From 9Gag to HN, Windows 10 is a recurring meme of disrespect for the -cattle- consumer, in a world of Snowden and Facebook where we don't even own our computers. I say there's a demand (with money available) for a trustworthy OS in the PC world, and for a open-source in the Apple world. Selling today's OSes might be impossible indeed. But a l…
Have you actually tried to talk about those supposed advantages to non-tech people? Try it. Even many tech people don't care about that stuff and get annoyed if you start bringing up this kind of democracy, privacy etc. stuff.
People care about features and convenience. Getting stuff done and being entertained.
Seriously, talk to "normal people" and see for yourself.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#233A single IM platform through which everyone can talk to everyone regardless of their IM service, and I mean I wanna be able to send a message to someone's iMessage from my Battle.net account, and then receive someone's Facebook message on my Slack or something. Obviously IDK how this would be possible, but IM is now broken beyond repair by companies that tried to "fix" it. The list of IM apps on my iPhone keeps growi…
What happens when you send a message? Does it spam to all platforms? Does everyone have to declare a preferred app to receive? Does it check your previous communication with that contact to see which platform has the best response rate?
Just asking, it doesnt seem like it would be that difficult. In fact im sure this used to exist when it was just msn, icq etc.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#234A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a physical keyboard, running android or Linux. These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text. Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC…
> Motorola Droid 3/4
I recently and reluctantly retired my Droid 4, simply because Android 4.1 was getting old (no stable newer versions available) and the phone was too slow for newer apps.
Now I'm on a Blackberry Q5 - Purely for the physical keyboard. The downside is that I have to live with very limited app support :(
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#2351) More high quality news analysis content. Think NASA Earth Observatory, The Information, or the best articles you've ever read, and put them behind a paywall. Consistently making top notch content is hard, but I suspect it can be easier if writers are paid good wages to explore their interests and the news industry decouples itself from advertising. I'd pay for it, and I suspect that over time, enough people would.
2) A personalized learning resource. None of this AI adaptive learning nor passive MOOC lecture watching. Get people who know what I want to know (usually job-related skills) and have them sit down and teach me things 2-3x a month. I want structured, supportive, long-lasting mentorship from people who genuinely want to see me grow.
3) A doctor that proactively cares about my health. I hurt my shoulder, but aside from a 30 min physical therapy appointment once every other month, I'm on my own. My posture sucks despite having a split keyboard, standing desk, and doing exercises to fix weak muscles. I need someone to make me diligent about my own well being, day after day. I want workout buddies. I want someone who will pick up yoga just so I'd have someone to do it with. I can get more health benefits from a concerned friend than a licensed medical professional.
4) Life training. Working in tech makes me feel detached from humanity. I want to be a more loving person (I am one, but the culture distorts things and makes me think about my skills/career/startups/work/money too much and life too little). I want someone to help me take 8 weeks off a year to spend time with family and go on vacations. I want someone to help me be a better parent when I have kids (my parents aren't great role models). I want someone to remind me to appreciate all the things I have in my life.
What products I use, how I store my data, etc are just sweating the small stuff. Health, education, happiness, sense of community, etc -- fix my big, recurring problems that truly matter to me as a human. Go above and beyond to do so and pay way more attention to detail than most software products do today. Relentlessly follow up on everything. Keep it human and personal.
These are probably not the answers you wanted to hear, but these are needs that grow bigger and are usually unaddressed over time.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#236An operating system built around IPFS. This would make the browser/native dichotomy irrelevant by offering the best of both worlds and then some.
AFAIK the reason web apps have become so popular is because they load quickly and don't require the user to manage installation and updating. IPFS would achieve the speed through caching and the installing/updating process with its namespaces feature.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#237A social media, messaging, and news aggregator that screen-scrapes or otherwise accesses FB, Twitter, Instagram, FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Hangouts, GMail, HN, Reddit, etc, and integrates them all into one unified interface. This of course would violate ToS agreements and various services would try to block it. But if it ran as a local app instead of in the cloud, and it was regularly updated, it would be ver…
Well, I have been trying a hobby-dev project that is kinda along these lines but I am almost on the verge of giving up.
The problem is, the feed/stream API endpoints for most of the services mentioned above, either do not exist or have been removed.
- FB and Instagram no longer provide them, for sure.
- WhatsApp doesn't have an official API - the last time I test-drove Yowsup, my number was 'blocked' by WhatsApp.
- No idea if there's an API for iMessage, although I get the feeling there mightn't be...
Screen-scraping all of these services is way too much effort for way little reward. Not to mention that FB keeps 'updating' its UI/UX quite frequently and Instagram doesn't show a 'feed' on the web if you login.
- FB messenger is based off the XMPP protocol, so yeah, there might be a way to access it without having to screen-scrape.
- There's a free/paid service called Integrated Inbox which integrates Google's services: http://integratedinbox.com/plans/
That leaves HN, reddit and the Google gang - is it really worth the time to integrate these into one service? Maybe one could build the basic structure over the weekend and then provide an option add-on different sites as a 'plugin'...
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#238A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a physical keyboard, running android or Linux. These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text. Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5 form factor with modern phone hardware.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#239A way to use Mechanical Turk from outside the US. I've needed it with every client I ever worked with, and I need it now and know a dozen companies who do. CrowdFlower has a de facto monopoly on the outside of the US supply and charges an enormous premium for it - enough to turn off most of them. I certainly don't want to pay several thousand a month for the right to submit jobs, although I was ok with the 25% premiu…
Check out https://www.scaleapi.com/ not sure if they work outside of the US - but they are a MT alternative
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?
#240A non-cloud off-site backup appliance. This is what I want (I know there are alternatives, but this is what I want): A device that I buy, and can plug at least one hard drive in to. I give it some sort of passphrase. I then place it in a friend's house and connect it to their internet connection. I can then access it remotely from my house. I can easily backup my stuff to it. My backups are encrypted, both over the w…
You can do this with Time Capsule I believe. Doesn't help for windows or linux of course.